Category: Tips

I'll be giving a talk on responsive design at the 2013 Drupalcamp Twin Cities. I'll be discussing how responsive design as a field goes far deeper than just squishy grids, and get in to various techniques, tips and resources for web themers to use. The talk will be from a Drupal perspective, though the content does apply to any site building or CMS.

The 2nd Annual Twin CIties DrupalCamp is coming up soon, May 18th and 19th! Several of us having been working hard to put together another great 2 day conference, and anyone with an interest in Drupal should plan to attend. http://2012.tcdrupal.org/

Free Training

If you are currently working with Drupal as a site editor, designer or new developer, or plan to be working with Drupal soon, you really should consider attending the free training sessions, on May 17th.

Getting more SPAM sent via text messages to your cell phone? This article from the New York Times has a few suggestions, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/05/technology/personaltech/fighting-back-against-spam-texts.html

Overall, it's a going to be a pain for some time, but at least this is a start.

I just recently activated a Google Voice number, and wondered how I can start using it as part of my work. It's free (for now), it's easy to setup, it's super cool how they allow you to browse and choose from dozens of phone numbers in your area code - but it's tied to the computer. Or so I thought.

Internet Explorer takes a lot of heat over the years (in the web building world) for its lack of support for CSS. It's gotten better with version 7 and version 8, but it still lacks support for the latest version of CSS (CSS 3). Some popular features that CSS3 introduces to browsers like Firefox and Safari and Chrome include rounded corners and drop shadows. These are both time-savers and filesize/bandwidth savers for web pages. Because of Internet Explorer's popularity, these new CSS3 rules have been largely ignored. Why use them if a majority of site visitors can't see them?

I was just filling out a review of an online store, for a service called resellerratings.com, and I decide to briefly scroll through the Terms I was agreeing to, in order to post my review. Looks at terms of agreement isn't something I usually do, by the way, and I'm sure most of us do not. But something really struck me from their terms, located right at the top of the agreement:

When putting together content for your site, try to present your written words in plain old HTML-based text. This would seem to be the obvious choice, but it’s not always the case.

When gathering content together for a new or redesigned website, information is often created and/or found inside a variety of proprietary formats (e.g. Word, Power Point, Publisher, etc. ) and exported for the website as a PDF. Choosing the PDF format allows users to keep the same page layout documents were created in, without having to recreate it in a web page. It’s a quick and easy method to publish information online.

Time for a quick roundup of some of my current favorite tools, starting with software. In future posts, I'll showcase some online tools and other useful utilities.

The overriding theme to these tools is that they are useful, cheap or free, and accessible wherever you go, by phone app or computer. You may have never heard of these, or they may be so obvious you've already moved on to the next thing. Let me know if you find them useful, have other suggestions, or comments on what I've found.

When choosing a domain for your website, the first consideration is the name itself. Finding a domain name you want to use that's not already taken is a difficult task. One study has over 110 million domains registered as of 2009. More often than not, you will find that "yourdesireddomain.COM" is taken.

I recently attended a talk by noted web usability expert Jared Spool, entitled "Revealing Treasures from the Amazon". Amazon.com is an icon, one of the most highly visited and well-known websites around, and it's often cited as a model for what others want in a website. "Do it like Amazon" is a mantra repeated over and over again by companies building or retooling their website. They seem successful, therefore we should just copy what they do.